What make a successful youtube channel?

A few (a less) of my friends tell me that they don’t spend a huge amount of time watching mainstream television anymore just clips on youtube. Hmm. Got me thinking.

I had a look back to the channels I was subscribed to around 2010-15. I spent a huge amount of time watching people create and produce their own content. I wanted to see how their channels were doing as in some cases its been years since I watched any of their online videos.

Some had the same amount of subscribers, some were a bit more successful and others were dead. As in the channel was no longer producing original content that had recently uploaded.

One example of this was very successful Jacksgap channel now renamed Jack Harries. This channel had everything going for it. Two good-looking brothers producing content consumed by a mainly teenage female audience. It was four years ago the channel in my opinion took a decision to jump from what they were producing for teenage market to a artsy-climate-change-eco-warrior self-indulgent wank-fest. This was the nail in the coffin for the channel and has never recovered since. I was berated at the time for saying their content wasn’t what people wanted to see. The brothers wanted to move on their core audience didn’t.

From the above graph we can see the decline in the channel subscribers and now haemorrhages an average of 10k per month.

As I said in the beginning of the post this channel is not unique to the situation. Coming up with fresh original content is vital for a youtube channel to survive.

Original content

Be authentic

Post videos when you say you will not 3 days later because you are ‘too busy’